


Once Awake We Must Away

by anitaupstairs



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, M/M, Pining, searching for Luke, spys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 00:47:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5476931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anitaupstairs/pseuds/anitaupstairs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey is still. His blood is spreading in the snow, creeping out across the bright, white ground. She could kill him now. One swing of the saber and he'd be dead. </p><p>He knew who FN-2187 was, what his purpose was, where he was going (wherever the First Order sent him), but Finn? What does Finn want and what possible role could an ex-stormtrooper play in the Resistance? He's never had anything of his own, and now to have a cause, a purpose, to have friends...</p><p>Rey searches for truth, and Luke Skywalker, Finn for direction and the Resistance for a way forward.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There is the thing and the thing that is right. There are always these two, the thing and the thing that is right. The balance is in choosing correctly. Before, the thing was this; she could’ve still been on Jakku with more food than most see in an entire year, whole sixty portions, had she sold BB8. None this would’ve happened then. She would be comfortable, and full and safe, sitting in the sand with her back against the hull of her ship home. Had she done the thing. Of course, she’d be lonely still, as cold on the inside as she would be sun warmed on the outside. There would be no Finn, grabbing her hand and pulling her after him, none of the almost pleasant now familiar wet dog smell of Chewie, no Resistance and no Han Solo. Then again, Finn was bleeding out in the snow, maybe dead, and she’d last seen Chewie bellowing like his heart had been ripped out. Han. She shook herself.  


Instead she had done the right thing. She had kept BB8. And Han, he’d done the right thing too, had tried, and now he was dead and she was out in the snow, the coldest she’d ever been, even counting space and feeling like her chest had been rent open and her heart inside squashed.  


Lying in front of her, in the snow, he whimpered a little, laying spread out on the ground. X marks the spot. The thing that stole her future, a monster certainly. He was staring at her, one side of his face unmarred the other spit through. He thinks she’s about to kill him and he looks like he’d welcomes it. Rey wants to kill him. She’s never killed anyone before. She stabbed a boy, years ago. That had been an accident of sorts. She may’ve shot some of the stormtroopers too, but even if she’d managed to kill one of them, that would be far different from killing Kylo Ren, defenseless in the snow. She’d really have to kill him, feel the flicker of energy that is his force, die. Imagining Han Solo, she almost can do it, or at least she can picture a version of her doing it. Doing it, and then what? Going back to the resistance and telling Leia that her husband and her son were both dead, Solo at her son’s hands and her son at Rey’s? No, she can’t do that. What a trade that would be, a son and a husband for a scavenger left behind by her own family. Who’s to say what the right thing to do is? Shouldn’t the force tell her what to do? Shouldn’t she feel it in her bones, if she is indeed a jedi, shouldn’t the way be clear? She imagined Han were here, “Hey kid, what are you talkin’ about? You don’t need some magic power from the ‘verse telling you what’s right, use your head.”  


And so does. She may want Kylo Ren dead, but that is anger driving her, and anger leads hate. Acting in haste, killing him now, will solve nothing. Instead, she summons the force, feeling the tingling in her fingers, pushing at her skin, and racing up her arms. Rey feels warm for the first time since she left Jakku, as the heat rushes through her. She pulls the tendrils of power in to her center and focuses them. Kylo Ren, perhaps sensing she’s come to a decision, opens his mouth to say something, and then falls back, boneless.  


He’s far bigger than she is, and dragging him is difficult, but she manages to get him up, his legs dragging along the ground. Just as she steps back to the base, the ground beneath them gives way and they tumble forward, caught in a mess of rocks and snow and clods of dirt. Head over heels they fall down a small embankment. Rey staggers up again, heaving the dead weight of Ren behind her. Chewie meets her by the fallen form of Finn. He scoops the stormtrooper up as if he were weightless, not looking at her or Ren. She grits her teeth and staggers on through the snow to the Millennium Falcon.  
There’s a great crowd around the Falcon when it lands, hands grab at Finn, pulling him from her again, and then there are medics and yelling and the worried, and a pilot in the Resistance’ orange jumpsuit and white vest, his tanned face worried, shouting orders and barging through. Rey still feels cold, in fact she’s shaking a little, unable to get up.  


A hand, large and warm and rough with matter fur, comes to rest on her shoulder. Chewie is standing above her, and she knows her legs need to work, she needs to get out of this ship’s hold and go face the real world. Outside on the tarmac, Leia Organa is peering into the Falcon behind her. Rey lets the sorrow show on her face, and watches Organa’s crumble.

In his old life, FN-2187 would wander at night. That was strictly not allowed, they slept in shallow bunks, stacked five trooper high. After mess, there was evening training, rec time and then sleep. Sleep brought the nightmares; his family, now only blurry shadows, sometimes a bright light or loud noise. Always battle, the sizzling snap of a blaster and the panic, closing in inside his helmet. When the nightmares came he would wander, slipping out of his bunk and pacing along the halls, sometimes falling into a night patrol. He was rarely stopped, the First Order did not accept autonym but more often than not FN-2187’s activities simply went unnoticed. Unnoticed by most. Slip noticed. In space, there is no night and no morning, but when the nightmares were bad enough to keep FN-2187 awake through one sleep cycle and into the next, long enough he’d slump over during morning mess, Slip would elbow him awake.  


It was thoughts of Slip, FN-2003, that woke FN-2187. That woke Finn. The sickbay was silent and dark. The beds either side of him were empty. A droid stood dormant in a corner, its head hanging low. He was choking, heart racing and for a moment, he couldn’t remember who he was or how he’d come to be there. He was muttering, nonsense at first and then just “FN-2187” over and over again. He tried to slow his breathing. His name was Finn now. F – I – N - N. Finn heaved a gasping breath, his hands, curled into fists, relaxing. He realized then, his back was burning. He could feel the line of the saber cutting from one shoulder down to his waist. The scar itched, which, according to the medic, meant it was healing.  


Finn couldn’t remember ever being in a sickbay as a stormtrooper. Generally, if you got shot, you got left. He can’t wander now, can’t even get up, so he just lays on the bed, shivering and shaking. The nightmare lingers still, Slip is dying over and over again, in his head. Slip is dying and the villagers are dying and screaming. He can here women wailing, and a baby crying and feel the pressure of Slip’s hand on his helmet as he dies. This isn’t a new nightmare, it’s once he’s had since Jakku, only he hadn’t slept much since Jakku so it feels newly terrible. And tonight was different.  


He was in the holding bay, shoulder to shoulder with Slip and Zeroes, FN-2003. The landed, jostling against each other. The doors opened and the fighting enveloped them. Captain Phasma is screaming in his ear, and Slip is running ahead of him and then Slip falls and he drops beside him. He pulls his helmet off, unable to breath, and looks down at Slip, only it isn’t Slip it’s Poe, blood bubbling from his mouth, riddled with blaster holes. He smiles at Finn and Finn is screaming, and then he looks up, and Poe is standing above him, blaster pointed between his eyes.  


“Once a stormtrooper, always a stormtrooper.” And Poe pulls the trigger.  


Finn tries to forget it, but the next morning he can’t quite meet Poe’s eyes. Poe has been visiting him every morning, updating him about life on the base and asking questions. He was amazed to learn the Finn had never had real food.  


“They gave us nutrient packs, and water. Carrying real food would’ve been impractical” Finn explained shoveling whatever Poe brought him, some sort of porridge apparently, into his mouth.  


“So you’re tellin’ me you’ve never had food before and here I am giving you hospital porridge? The Hero of Starkiller?” Poe is sitting next to the bed, resting his elbows on the mattress.  


Finn looks away, he doesn’t like being called The Hero of Starkiller, not when he helped to build the damn thing, but Poe has no way of knowing that.  


“Well, I did drink some water out of a trough on Jakku, so I’ve got pretty high culinary standards, being a hero and all.”  


Poe grins.  


“As soon as the Doc says you can go we’ll go get you some proper food, and a drink. Well, I doubt I’ll have to get you a drink, we got pilots lined up round the base wanting to thank you Finn.”  


Finn grins back, and tries not to think to hard about that fact that he’d much rather be stuck in the sickbay with Poe, laying there like an invalid, then about anything else in the world.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello darlings, anyone up for being a beta reader? Get in touch and I'll love you for the foreseeable future.

Leia Organa is his first official visitor, which is terrifying. Please understand how terrifying that woman is. She would hardly come up to his chin if he was standing, but she has a presence that’s at least ten feet tall. She seems diminished though, she sits for a long time by his bed in silence. Poe is his second visitor and Finn wonders whether Poe ever speaks when he’s not in the infirmary, because whenever Poe visits he doesn’t stop talking. Not that Finn minds. He likes it, the constant stream of gossip about the base and the resistance and the republic.  


“That’s Pava, she flew an X wing with Skywalker. Ledged.” Poe is sitting on what has become ‘his chair’ with his feet on Finn’s bed, rocking backwards and forwards, pointing out people in the hallway.  


“She was at the battle of Yavin and everything.”  


Finn lifts an eyebrow. For all that Poe seems cool and collected, he’s also an absolute nerd about the Galactic Civil War. Finn knows about the war from the other side, knows it as a force of chaos, something to be avoided. A great wrongdoing that restored the crumbling, bureaucratic republic and toppled the precursor to the First Order. The First Order educated them, well, indoctrinated them, and so he knows all his history is terribly inaccurate. He was taught the Luke, Leia and Solo were traitors.  


“You say, the battle of Yavin, like you expect that to mean something? To some of us, tales of the civil war were just bedside stories, we didn’t grow up living next door to Princess Leia, ya know?” Finn grins, sitting propped up on a mound of pillows.  


“We can’t all be me unfortunately.” Poe winks  


Finn can feel himself blushing. He’s accepted that blushing and stammering are just part of his natural reaction to Poe Dameron.  


“Unfortunate as it is, that everyone can’t be me, you, my friend, are in for a treat, as I, Poe Dameron, best and most daring pilot of the resistance, and thoroughly unqualified history teacher, will spin you the tale of the battle of Yavin.”  


“I’m honored,” Finn mutters dryly,  


“Shh, I’m spinning a tale.” Poe rocks backwards, eyes half closed  


“By all means, go ahead with your story, Professor Dameron, I needed a nap anyway.”  


“You better not fall asleep on me Finn, not if I’m going to take the time to tell you this.” Poe looks incensed, leaning forward again, elbows on his knees, getting right in Finn’s face. He puts a hand on the bed to steady himself and for a moment, Finn thinks Poe is about to kiss him, then the pilot settles back on his haunches and begins his tale, as if nothing had happened.  


Poe waves his hand in an arc, as if pushing back a curtain to set the scene, “Nearly thirty years ago, a plucky young farmer from the ends of the universe; a horrible, sandy moon where nothing ever happened,” He paused, grinning, “Sound like anyone we know?”  


“Anyway, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo, unlikely hero’s, joined forces to save the beautiful Princess Leia, who was a prisoner of the Galactic Empire.” Poe winks,  


“The forces of evil only ever take beautiful captives, like myself, anyway, she had plans to the Empire’s secret weapon that needed to make it back to the rebellion.”  


Finn wishes he knew if Poe was like this with everyone, flirty and witty and, sparkly. He wouldn’t be surprised if Poe just made everyone feel like the center of the universe, like the sun turned all its brightness and warmth on them for a moment. Oblivious to Finn’s musing, Poe proceeded in his story, his face alight with childish glee,  


“Like Starkiller, the Death Star was designed to fight off big attacks. Anyway, we got a small force, just single pilots in Y and X wings, went in. They were flying down these trenches, tight as can be, and losing men left and right. The first group, Gold squadron, goes in.” Poe swoops his hand down, flying it close to the bedclothes.  


“And they all get shot down.” His hand drops.  


“The next group, Red squad, goes in,” Again the hand swoops across and jolts up, as Poe yells, “Shoots! But they miss and get shot down.” The hand drops.  


“So Luke takes a last run, down this trench and Vader himself is coming up behind him, and in then BAM!” Poe’s other hand soars in, “Solo comes out of no where and starts picking TIE fighters off. That gives Skywalker all the help he needs and POW!” Poe mimics an explosion, throwing his hands above his head,  


“the whole thing comes crashing down.” Poe rocks back, looking smug.  


“That, my man, is the story of the Battle of Yarin. Not the most correct telling, but certainly the best.”  


“Even Han would agree with that, though his version emphasized The Falcon’s role a bit more,” General Leia stood at the door, her hair elaborately curled on her head and dropping down in elegant curls.  


“Princess.” Poe moves to stand, but his feet are still balanced on Finn’s bed so he just sort of stumbles and then falls forward, stopping his fall by bracing on Finn’s legs. Finn winces, and Poe immediately jumps backwards.  


“You’ll be wanting the Hero of Starkiller, so I’ll just…” Poe moves to back out.  


“No, I need to talk to both of you.” Leia is still standing partly in the doorway, still as tiny as ever but to Finn she seems to fill the room.  


“We have a problem. A spy. You two and BB8 are going to appear before the senate, they want to publicly honor you. That should give you enough cover to snoop around. We need to know who’s feeding information to the First Order.”  
Poe looks distinctly unhappy.  


“General, I’m a pilot, not a diplomat.”  


“Yes, Dameron. Finn’s no diplomat either and I don’t hear him complaining.”  


“No ma’ma.” Says Finn.  


“So it’s settled, you leave within the week.” Leia turns to go, and Poe, looking grim, follows her. Once again, Finn is alone.


End file.
